This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-382494, filed Dec. 15, 2000, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to (1) a walker navigation system for use by a walker such as a senior citizen, a parent with a baby carriage, or a person in a wheelchair using an elevator or an escalator, rather than steps or stairs; (2) a walker navigation method; (3) a guidance data collection apparatus that collects information for use in guidance; and (4) a guidance data collection method.
2. Description of the Related Art
The mobile dedicated terminal which provides with a GPS (Global Positioning Service) receiver and a position data function of PHS is commercial available. The mobile dedicated terminal is used for providing service such as deliver of a map based on position data or town information. The service that the user enjoys a route guidance by designating a departure location and a destination without having such position data has come to be performed by a PC or a cellular phone. These guidance services include a service in which a course to be guided is manually set beforehand. However, such service locations a limit on a range that can be guided.
In contrast, there is a route guidance service generating automatically a guidance route based on a road network that the Geographical Survey Institute provides or a private house map. The road network comprises a line representing a road connecting between crossings, but includes no concept such as a road width. In order to supplement this, a route automatic generation system is developed which calculates the road width using the private house map and so on, and automatically generates plural routes coupling a departure location and a destination using the road network. This system is so constructed as to select from the plural routes a route that seems to be most easy to find in a user by the road width extracted from the house map.
A conventional guidance cannot lead a route suitable for following users.
1) A user such as senior citizens who are of trouble waking and want to use an elevator and an escalator rather than stairs
2) A user using a baby carriage or a wheelchair who wants to use a sidewalk without a step, an elevator or an escalator.
3) A user carrying a big load which wanted to use a sidewalk without a step, an elevator, or an escalator.
4) A user who wants to use a road through which the user can pass with a safe conscience even if it is an indirect road, without a road which is narrow in a road width due to parking of many cars and bicycles, and cannot pass a wheelchair,
5) A user who wants to use a road illuminated by many streetlights in the night.
According to current guidance systems, when a departure point and a destination point are designated by a user, only one route is provided. Suppose, for example, that a senior citizen cannot use the stairs (in particular, going down) due to pain caused by trouble walking. Accordingly, he or she wants to use an escalator or an elevator. Moreover, a person who takes an infant and goes out with a baby carriage, or a person using a wheelchair, cannot pass a step between a crosswalk and a sidewalk. Furthermore, since he or she cannot take stairs or an escalator, he or she wants to use an elevator, if possible. Also, a person carrying a large load wants to use an escalator or an elevator instead of stairs. Even if there is no step, when the road width becomes narrow due to the parking of many cars and bicycles, a person with a large load or a wheelchair cannot pass through the narrow road. Such a road presents problems in front of a station where many bicycles are used for attending office/attending school, or during the weekend shopping rush.
A visiting nurse or a carer which needs to visit a new residential area without distinction of the night and day wants to pass on the bright road provided with streetlights that can walk with a safe conscience in the night. As thus described, some persons have various demands to want to take advantage of the road where there is no step and road width is ensured, even if made a detour to some extent and to use an escalator or an elevator as possible.
Since no route guidance service has been provided so far, the user has satisfied with a mere route guidance. It is demanded that guidance along hope of a user is performed as well as that the guidance is merely available. In other words, there is demanded a system that a user can enjoy a desired route guidance by not only inputting a departure location and a destination but also designating whether it is a guidance in the night, a guidance to give priority to the use of an escalator or an elevator or a guidance including no step. As a result, satisfaction degree of the user is improved. However, in a conventional guidance, the means for inputting a demand of the user is not prepared.
Supplement information such as an elevator, an escalator, stairs, and a step had to be collected for the purpose of providing such a guidance. In addition to supplement data, landmarks such as a convenience store or a bank becoming a mark are manually collected under the present conditions. This collection is terrible, and data are not readily updated, so that the route must be guided by information before two or three years. Furthermore, the system cannot cope with the intense location of relocationment of a store such as a convenience store or a hamburger shop. Besides, temporary road information of the locations where a walk is impossible under construction cannot be collected.
In such data collection, there are problems that a person must go to the actual location really to confirm present conditions, that a man power is required for digitizing collected data, and that an input mistake occurs. If data collected by a person going to the actual location really can be digitized in real time, large shortening of collection time and drastic reduction of an input mistake may be realized.
In the prior art, there is no guidance that accepted a demand of a user such that the user can walk on a road provided with many streetlights or a road having no step if possible, and can use an elevator or an escalator if possible. A collection apparatus capable of collecting landmarks and supplement data such as an elevator, an escalator, stairs and a step and digitizing the collected data at the location is demanded.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a walker navigation system comprising: an input designation device configured to input a departure location and destination of guidance; a road data storage configured to store road data; a supplement data storage configured to store supplement data representing at least some of stairs, an elevator, an escalator, a step, and road width in correspondence with the road data of the road data storage; a route generator configured to generate an optimum route by calculating a cost of a route from the departure location to the destination based on the road data stored in the road data storage and the supplement data stored in the supplement data storage; and an output device configured to output the optimum route in a form desired by a user.